


Beyond the Quiet River

by Winter_Girl



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Childbirth, F/M, M/M, Mpreg, Past Infidelity, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winter_Girl/pseuds/Winter_Girl
Summary: Hydra has moved on from the Winter Soldier, he is left to deal with his current situation on his own. By an act of fate he gets help from a woman he believed long dead. Will his past distract him from his future? Will Steve accept him back like this?  WARNING: Bucky is probably OOC, Story somehow turned out more OC centered than I intended, sorry... And also gore, not too descriptive, dub-con if you squint, dubious anatomy and I can't think what else I need to mention





	Beyond the Quiet River

**Author's Note:**

> Just a few points of reference here. Obviously NOT canon in more ways than one. And yes there is an OC. Pairing, however is Bucky/Steve. There is just mention of very distant Bucky/OC but calm down, Steve is the love of his life. What he is feeling for the OC is more related to guilt than actual love.  
> Non-graphic birth scene to follow, also lots of angst and tears. 
> 
> Spoiler alert, sort of: She is actually not a good person. 
> 
> Also, story is not Beta'd and I wrote it late at night and English is not my first language, and also I may or may not have been slightly tipsy while writing... So there WILL be errors.

He was alone. He felt like he had been alone all his life. In the deepest parts of his foggy mind he knew that he hadn’t always been this alone. There was a time when he had been loved. But that all seemed like someone’s else’s life now as he wandered through the desolate streets in the heart of winter in the coldest place on earth. He was shivering, unsure if it was from pain, fear, or the unrelenting cold. 

Hydra had moved on from the Winter Soldier project six months ago. He was supposed to be put to death, regardless of the life inside of him, they meant to discard him like a piece of old equipment. He was a difficult case, his programming archaic and unreliable. They moved on to newer subjects. It was by sheer luck that the young new lab assistant had taken pity on him and let him go rather than kill him as she was meant to. He was grateful, but sure she would have paid for it with her life. But he had other things to worry about. The new life inside of him was not lost on him, and he was burning with the need to protect it, to be less alone in this world that had long since forgotten James Barnes. 

So he wandered through the streets of St Petersburg, having learned that the best place to hide was the last place people would look for you. He wondered where he would go now that he had run out of time. He knew Steve was alive, but he wasn’t sure whether it was safe for either of them to seek him out. He wasn’t prepared to take the risk. So he stayed here in this desolate frost swept place. 

He had been wondering around in the cold for hours when he found an open door. A boiler room to a large apartment complex. A place where only the elite rich classes of Russia would ever find themselves living. Not a derelict soldier like himself. The buildings looked cold and harsh, much like the rest of this unforgiving country. He longed for the New York summers he once enjoyed as a child. But those thoughts faded fast as another wave of pain took him. At least it was warm in here. He closed the door behind him and prayed to a god he no longer believed in that no one would open that door until he was long gone. Because if he was found now his life would be over. 

He paced the concrete floor slowly and meticulously, breathing heavily as he rode out the cascades of pain. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It was late now, the moon high in the night sky by the time he heard the car door slam just outside the boiler room. He remembered that there was a set of stairs next to the room heading up to the apartments above, so he wasn’t too alarmed at first. He heard the voice of a woman greeting an old man who was some distance away. In pure Russian she asked him why he was out in the cold so late and he responded with a chuckle and said that the heating in the block had tripped off again. Bucky heard the woman sigh, she had come closer to the door now. He heart beat in his ears and he couldn’t help but gasp in panic when he heard her tell the old man to go back to his place and that she would sort it out. He reached for the pistol he had in his bag and aimed it at the door, still brandishing the silencer. He would shoot her if he had to, to protect himself and the secret her carried with him. His vision began to blur as the door slowly opened and just before he pulled the trigger, something deep deep inside of him broke. So there he was pointing a colt 45 at a face that seemed familiar. So familiar that he could not pull the trigger, no matter how hard his instincts were screaming at him to protect the child that stirred within him, he just couldn’t kill this girl. Her dark green eyes started at him with a sense of wonder. Her jet black hair was tied up behind her in a messy bun and she was dressed in all black. Jeans tight around her toned body, black boots coming up to her knees, a thick black jacket lined with fur hugging on her shoulders. He regarded her, trying to figure out what figment of his imagination had come to life before him. He knew her. But that wasn’t possible. She died in 1946 in a plane crash in Italy. He remembered the colonel waving the newspaper in front of his face, claiming that the last person to love Bucky Barnes has died at their hands. It felt like an eternity that they stood there before each other, frozen in shock. She took a tentative step forward he tensed, hissing at her in Russian that he would shoot her if she came any closer. He felt deep ache starting in his back and legs that would soon turn white hot and render him a trembling mute for at least a minute and a half so panic started to bloom in his chest. 

“Bucky?” She breathed, not daring to believe her own words.

He lowered the gun, just an inch or so, out of shock. He hadn’t heard anyone call him that in more than 8 decades. He shook his head out of disbelief and no small sense of relief. Although he still wasn’t ready to let go of the fact that this could all be a hallucination. “Blair…” He all but whispered the name, forgotten on his lips the day she had walked away from him in Germany in 1945. It was the last time he ever saw her. She was crying, unable to keep her usual collected demeanour past the fact that she now realized that she was a smoke screen for him and Steve. Regardless of why he had asked her to marry him in the first place, the last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt her. He had grown to love her as a friend in the five years they spent together. And he had repaid her devotion with deceit. “It’s not possible.” He finished, clicking the safety off the gun. She put her hands up then, closing the door behind her slowly. He began shaking as he tried desperately to keep his resolve against the assault his body was raging against itself. He would have shot her already had it not been for the navy blue stethoscope hanging around her neck. Blair Hale was the youngest woman ever to graduate from John’s Hopkins Medical School with a triple major of psychology, emergency surgery, and genetics. Unheard of in the 1940s. 

“Why not? I designed that serum that the army stole and gave to Erkskein. Or don’t you remember that?” She said slowly, her eyes darting from his protruding abdomen to the gun, now betraying the fact that he was shaking. 

“The crash.” He managed to hiss out through clenched teeth. 

She shook her head, taking another step forward. She seemed calmer now, more sure of her facts. “It was faked. The plane that crashed was a soviet cargo plane. They repainted it to look like a military plane. The real one was hijacked…” She trailed off, letting him do the math. He lowered the gun a little more, gaining more bearing at the pain subsided. 

“You work for Hydra.” He stated, more hurt than scared at this realization. She scoffed and shook her head quickly. 

“Never. Anarchy 99.” 

It was all she really needed to say. Her presence now seemed less impossible and more logical. The time he had spent with Hydra he’d often heard of Anarchy 99’s great weapon. The doctor who could work miracles in moments. Hydra called her the Merchant of Death, but he had come to understand that this was just because she killed so many of their agents with her terrible concoctions. They were afraid of her. He put the gun down and sunk to his knees, unable to fight it anymore. She came to him then, putting a hand on his shoulder as she knelt in front of him. 

“We need to get you upstairs Buck. I can help you.” She said softly. 

He laughed almost bitterly. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine. Just leave me here.” He said as he turned away from her, unable to meet her gaze, the guilt of years past suddenly burning in him as strong as ever. 

“James. Come upstairs so we can get you warm and comfortable. If not for me, then for the baby?” She insisted. 

He looked at her then, she was playing on his conscience, he knew it. She seemed to realize that he wouldn’t place her in this situation to save himself, but would not be able to decline an offer to protect his child. And he couldn’t deny that she was more than capable of delivering a baby safely, no matter what the circumstances. She was good at her job. He realized now, looking into those dark green pools that this was Blair. She had been his once and he hadn’t seen her, not really seen her until the day he filled those eyes with tears after she caught him with Steve in the barracks. He took her for granted, and now here she was, saving him again. He nodded absently and let her help him up. She flipped a switch on the board next to her and the furnace raged a little more vigorously than before as it finally realized it had a whole new block to heat up. 

She had grabbed a black duffle bag from her car before they went up the stairs to a door marked with a silver number ‘13’. When they went through the door into the still relatively cold but expansive open plan apartment they were greeted by two very enthusiastic cats. He smiled at the memories that came flooding him then. She always loved cats. 

She led him to the couch first and let him sit down as she scurried off to turn on the kettle and grab more of her medical supplies from a locked closet somewhere behind him. He kicked off his boots and laid back on the big couch littered with fleece blankets and another, much smaller, fluffy black cat. She lit a fire in the fireplace next to him before sitting down next to him. He was fighting another wave of unrelenting pain with deep calculated breaths. It was only once it subsided that she spoke.   
“I know that there’s a lot of things we have to talk about at some point, and we will, but maybe after this is over?” She ventured, the all too familiar optimism in her voice coming through again. He nodded with a tired smile, he only now realized just how deathly tired he really was. “Sounds good to me.” He breathed. 

“How long has this been going on?” she asked. He shook his head “I honestly don’t know. Started around late morning, early afternoon.” He said, still sounding out of breath to himself. His own voice was starting to sound strange to him so he looked around the apartment, taking in the shades of black and grey, silver here and there, but all cold stone and metallic, exactly like he had always imagined her home to look. Her taste in stark contrast to her optimistic and light hearted personality. 

She hesitated. “Have you done this before?” He looked back at her, frowning slightly. He thought for a moment, but then shook his head again. “No. I don’t think so.” She nodded, seemingly uninterested in prying any further. 

“Can I take a look?” It seemed entirely alien to him that a doctor was asking him permission to touch him. He was used to being pushed around and strapped down, poked and prodded at their leisure and every whim. He nodded slowly and felt himself involuntarily tense up as she moved closer to him, placing the seemingly dead black cat behind her. She didn’t lift his shirt as he thought she would. Rather pressing at the sides of his taunt belly through the shirt. She was gentle and more focused on what she was doing than who she was doing it to. He winced a little as she brushed over a particularly tender part of his abdomen. There was a scar there from one of the many times he had been shot. She stopped then. “She’s definitely in the right position, but not as low down as she needs to be for things to get going. And I suspect your water hasn’t broken yet?”

He couldn’t help but look at her once again in awe. “She?” He asked, suspiciously. A gender hadn’t really occurred to him as yet. She opened her mouth slightly, then shut it again and smiled. “I’m sorry. I tend to do that, I shouldn’t though. With guys, the baby is usually a girl, it’s complicated. Is it okay though? It’s gonna be weird if I keep calling her ‘it’. People tend not to like that.” She explained rolling her fingers around. He smiled at her, some things never change. He felt himself physically relaxing more and more by the minute. She bought back a sense of calm that he hadn’t known in years. And the more she spoke the more he could believe that it was really her and that she was still the same person. “It’s fine. I like it.” He said softly. 

“Has your water broken yet?” She asked again. He had been so shocked by her proclamation before that he totally missed the point of the question. 

“No. Is that bad?” He asked, a little worried at her persistence to the question. 

“No, it’s just more comfortable for you after it breaks, and it speeds up the process.” She assured him. 

He suddenly straightened himself out again as another wave of pain began to envelope him. He had to force himself to breathe through it as he rocked slightly to try and ride out the nearly unbearable taunt of his muscles. Blair placed one of her ever delicate hands on his lower back, massaging a particular spot in almost perfect circles. He could never imagine that such a small action could alleviate so much of his distress, and he almost sobbed in gratitude. He hadn’t known anything caring and gentle in decades and even the smallest such actions now threatened to break his carefully calculated resolve. “You’re okay, just keep breathing.” She whispered in his ear, her other hand curling around his metal arm. It wasn’t lost upon him that she didn’t even seem to realize that it was just cold chunk of junk metal she held on to. He gave a shaky sigh as the pain subsided and ran his metal hand through his hair trying to compose himself again. 

“I’m going to run you a hot bath, it’ll help with the pain, and I’ll make you some coffee.” She said as she suddenly got up from the couch and jogged down the hall.   
Once he had caught his breath he found himself staring at the lifeless body of the little black cat again. It seemed truly dead as he stroked it with his real hand. But it was still warm. He was baffled. He had watched her pick it up like a rag doll and plot it back down on a different place in an awkward position and it hadn’t moved a muscle.   
Blair came back down the hall from where she had turned on the bath water. As she was boiling the kettle he asked “Is this cat okay?” it seemed such an arbitrary question, but it was bugging him and he wanted to distract himself from the current situation. 

“Asher? The black one?” She asked. “Yeah. He seems dead.” He answered. 

She laughed. “He’s just sleeping. I found him quite literally frozen in the garage one day and I bought him inside and put him by the fire and gave him some warm milk and food. It took him a day or two, but he defrosted fully, ate himself into a stupor, and started to walk around. I’m pretty sure he got some hectic brain damage, coz he’s not all there, and he sleeps 20 hours a day, but he’s fine. I don’t know why he sleeps so deeply though, but I guess it could be worse.”

For the first time in what seems like a lifetime, Bucky laughed, truly, just a little bit. “You defrosted a cat. That seems exactly like the kind of thing you’d do.” 

He realized she was staring at him then. Almost longingly, and he saw a sudden deep sadness roll over her. Anyone else would have missed it, she hid it well, but he knew it was there. “I like saving strays.” She all but whispered. He could swear that she was fighting tears then. A short silence passed between them, weighing up a lot of years. But finally she turned away from him and walked down the hall to check on the tub. 

He got up, tentatively, to follow her to the bathroom. It was an open plan wet room, just like she always wanted. “You can get in. I’ll get the coffee.” She stated with a smile as she brushed past him. 

He started to peel off what layers of clothing he still had on, the air was still a little nippy, but most of the biting cold had subsided. Bucky sighed as he lowered himself into the hot water. He could feel his strained muscles giving little by little. When she came back in he was gripping the sides of the dark grey tub fighting through another wave. He could feel a sense of desperation rising within him. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from, he was in pain, but he was safe, his baby was safe, and the pain wasn’t unbearable as yet. 

She placed the mugs on the ledge by the window within his reach as she kneeled beside the tub rubbing his arm lightly. The metal one was away from her now, in plain sight, he wondered if she noticed it this time, but he caught her glancing at it anyway. 

“It’s okay.” He said, knowing that it made most people uncomfortable. She shocked him by suddenly reaching for it then and running her fingers up and down the cool metal surface. She intertwined her fingers with his cold metal ones and then sat back down. “It’s bloody beautiful. I’ve never really seen the older models.” She said, satisfied with it for the moment. It was not the reaction he expected, but she never did things that were expected, so he should have known better. She swallowed hard as she packed out a few supplies she had bought with her from the front of the apartment. There was a question there that she wasn’t asking. 

He put the other hand, the real one, underneath her chin and bought her gaze up to meet his. “I’m the winter soldier.” He found himself saying as a single stray tear made its way along the pale skin of her beautiful face. It was something she didn’t want to hear. Something that distressed her deeply, but he knew she wouldn’t talk about it now. Now wasn’t the time. She had work to do. 

“I’m gonna have to get personal here now. I know it sucks, but it needs to be done. I need to know what’s going on.” She said softly but with some determination. He tensed a little but nodded. “I trust you.” She said nothing to that but allowed him to lay further back and spread his legs a little more. Bucky didn’t mind. She had been down there before and he really did trust her. It was so much better than some faceless old man he hadn’t seen before in a dirty lab coat. It hurt, but she placed her other hand on his as some comfort. She didn’t take long, he appreciated that. 

“Buck. It’s gonna help you a lot if I break your water. I can feel the membrane and that’s the only reason it’s taking so long. You can’t get a grip on her with that much fluid around her.” She ventured tentatively. He winced at the name now. She never used to call him that. She was the only person in the world who persistently refused. She always called him by his first name, or she called him Jamie when she wanted to be funny, but never Bucky or anything close to it.   
“It’s okay, you can break it. I can handle it.” He breathed. 

“It won’t hurt. It’ll just feel really weird for half a second and then it’s gonna feel a whole lot better.” 

He was sceptical, especially after she grabbed the pair of medical plyers. He closed his eyes and braced himself as he felt the cold metal inside of him, but he almost cried out when he felt so much of the built up pressure give way suddenly and dissipate into almost nothing. It was as if it cleared his head as well as he looked around the room suddenly noticing a lot of things now for the first time. But he decided not to mention it as she stroked the side of his face still telling him that he’s okay. As the shock of the lost pressure began to subside he settled back down into the hot water and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Better?” She asked once he’d settled down.

He nodded a definite yes. “I didn’t think it would make that much of a difference.” He admitted. 

“Unfortunately it also means that things will speed up and it’ll hurt more…” She added. 

“That’s okay. It has to happen, right?” He stated. 

“I could always give you something for it. I have stuff here that won’t affect the baby at all.” She offered. 

He regarded her, thinking for a moment that was interrupted by a stronger cascade of pain. He sat up and braced himself as he moaned deeply, riding it out as best he could. He could have sworn it lasted much longer than the previous ones had too, but then again, that was probably a good thing. She was kissing his hand apologetically and urging him through it softly, almost tenderly. 

Once it was over he was left almost panting and shaking ever so slightly. “No.” he said. “I have to do this. I know it’s gonna get worse, but I have to do this, I’ve been drugged out half my life. I don’t want to be drugged out for this.” He all but insisted bitterly. 

She pulled him closer and hugged him. “It’s okay. I know. But just know that it’s there if you need it. I don’t want you to suffer like this if you don’t have to.” He wrapped his arm around her and nodded into her hair. She smelled like burnt sage and for a moment the scent tucked at the back of his memory, but he pushed it away quickly. Not now, he thought. 

They spent the next few hours in the bathroom. She kept topping up the tub with warmer water and talking him through the relentless onslaughts of pain he had been wracked with. 

He was on his knees now, resting his arms on the rim of the tub in front of him. Taking deep, ragged breaths and moaning through another assault on his already battered body. She called it transition, he thought it was bullshit. He needed to push but she said that was a bad idea, that he wasn’t dilated enough, that he would hurt the baby and himself that way. He figured he was hurt already, but she wouldn’t lie about hurting the baby, so he fought off the urge. At least it gave him something to do. 

“You’re almost there.” She encouraged him yet again. Her resolve hadn’t changed, her phone buzzed beside her, it was the second time it was ringing. The name on the screen read Nick, he didn’t recognize it. She just tapped on the ‘ignore’ icon so he figured it couldn’t be that important. “You still okay?” She asked. 

He sighed, trying to readjust his breathing. “Yeah, I just want to get it over with.” He said reaching down and resting a hand on his thigh as another contraction gripped him. He growled as his body tensed up, he felt the baby inside of him drop down lower now, with each new wave of pain she inched closer to freedom causing him more pain each time. He could feel his body spreading open, his bones shifting to accommodate the child within him. It was excruciatingly slow and it made him nervous at the thought of finishing the job. He was already in so much pain and he imagined that the last leg of this race would be the worst. 

The contraction seemed to go on forever and he panted desperately, wishing the pain away with every passing second. Once it finally began to dissipate he almost sobbed, but rather took in a long ragged breath and sighed heavily. 

Blair put a hand on his arm, alerting him that she was going to check his progress again. It didn’t really hurt anymore, but he still wasn’t all that comfortable with it. The pain and slow progress was making him irritable. As he felt her fingers inside of him he put his metal hand behind her back and buried his face in her neck with another shuddering sigh. As he took a deep breath in he smelled the scent of her hair again and a distant memory of a cold grey lab flashed before his mind’s eye. It wasn’t a Hydra lab, but he was strapped down again, and a Russian man with cold grey eyes and shoulder length black hair was looking down at him. He quickly shook off the memory. 

“You’re still not fully dilated, but she’s going to crown now anyway. She’s right there. So I think you can start pushing. Just don’t overdo it just yet. You’ve got a lot of muscle strength all over the place, be gentle with her. Okay?” He nodded, deeply relieved that the end was near. 

For now he relaxed in the aftermath of the last contraction. She had quickly taught him that letting go of himself in between would help him get the rest he needed. She was right. He folded his arm over hers and rested his head down. He had resigned himself to the fact that she really couldn’t be bothered with the metal arm. It was a piece of medical history to her. He let her spent the better half of half of an hour expecting it earlier. She had run her fingers all along it and traced the edges of where it met his skin with wonder in her eyes, her touch light and comforting. The physical part of him he hated the most for the memories it invoked no longer seeming all so cold and alien to him after Blair had breathed life into it with her ridiculous fascination with it. 

She had one free arm that she was using to run her fingers through his damp, sweaty hair. This level of tenderness was not like her, but he supposed that this situation invoked a certain sense of protectiveness in any woman, even a woman who didn’t like babies. It was nature and she couldn’t deny it. He didn’t realize that it was something else entirely that evoked this urge in her now. 

He raised his head slowly as he felt the beginnings of another unforgiving wave. He braced himself and started to bear down. Pain shot up his spine and gripped almost his entire lower body as he strained. He groaned again, but she coaxed him on. Her breath was hot on his neck and her words and small touched soothed him through it.   
This continued for what seemed like forever to him. He strained and fought and pushed through the next hour without all that much result. But the baby was crowning now. He felt it stretching him and he strained, gritting his teeth at the unyielding agony that now wracked him. Blair took his hand as another wave cascaded over him. She guided it down to where the baby’s head was beginning to break free. He keened helplessly as he pushed again, feeling her emerge just a little bit more. Blair placed his hand on the baby’s head where it was starting the leave him, agonizingly slowly. He didn’t understand the action but accepted it anyway. Once he finally relaxed again and felt the head slip back into his body Blair spoke to him. “Just press down on her, just a little bit, I know it seems counterproductive. But counter pressure gives you something to push against. It helps.” He shook his head, unable to form a coherent argument against it, but not willing to oblige in a venture that seemed senseless to him. He was running at the end of his rope now, energy spent, helpless and on the verge of surrendering. 

She ran a hand up the side of his jaw bone and rested it in hair by the nape of his neck. 

“Come on Bucky, you can do this. You’re so close.” She urged him. 

He clenched his eyes shut at the small betrayal. It had comforted him earlier, but that was before he remember how unlike her it was. “You never used to call me that.” He managed to choke out. 

She recoiled noticeably. “I’m…. I’m sorry.” Was all she said. He expected her to try and explain. She liked to explain her reasoning, but no explanation followed, she just kissed him on the forehead and promised not to do it again. Before he could ask her what it was about he was bearing down on the relentless force of his body again. Unwillingly he reached his hand down, pressing ever so slightly down on the baby’s head as it emerged from him again. Despite himself he wondered where this woman came from, knowing all these senseless things that made his life just a little bit easier right now. He forced himself to push longer and harder this time, stopping only briefly to catch a breath. He leaned forward as he felt the baby inch further out now. With two more drawn out and agonizing efforts her head was free. He sobbed quietly with the effort and pain. He was on fire and his body was giving in, tingling everywhere now with the agony. Every muscle in his body was trembling and sore, his back was killing him, his legs were numb and he was exhausted. 

Blair quickly reached down between his legs and felt around the baby’s head, pulling the cord free from around her neck. His heart skipped a beat when he realized that the cord had been wrapped around her neck. 

“What… Wh… Is she… was that the cord?” He stuttered in alarm. 

“Jamie, calm down. She’s okay. It wasn’t tight at all. It happens all the time. It’s okay. I promise.” She took his hand and put on the top of the baby’s head. “Do you feel that? With your index finger? You can feel her heartbeat through her scalp. She’s okay…” 

He began to relax then, for a heart breaking moment he had forgotten the agony he was in. But that little heartbeat, clearly far faster than his own, breathed life back into him. 

He kept pushing through the pain then, straining desperately to free the rest of her from him, but it wasn’t happening as quickly as he thought it would be. She was big he realized, her shoulders were stuck and there was nothing he could do but fight through it. He groaned deeply with each effort doing his best not to cry out and upset the neighbours. The last thing he wanted was for the cops to bang on the door over a noise complaint. When the baby finally gave way and he could free her from his body he was weak and trembling uncontrollably. He fought the urge to cry with relief and rather sunk back down into the warm water as Blair took the baby quickly, cutting the cord before he even realized what was going on. His mind was going foggy and all he could see where white blotches before his face. “Stay with me James, don’t pass out. Talk to me.”

He shook his head lazily and sat up a little straighter. “I’m here.” Was all he managed to say breathlessly. 

He slowly began to realize that there was an eerie silence in the room, and something about that didn’t seem right to his tired mind. Then his heart began to race in his chest and his ears rang with the silence that wasn’t supposed to be there. 

“Blair!” he exclaimed as panic coursed through his veins. 

“Give me a sec.” Blair said. She was sitting with her back to him with the silent baby in front of her. At first it looked like she was shaking the baby which almost made his blood boil, but then he noticed that she was rubbing it feverishly. 

“What’s wrong with her?” Bucky asked, his voice cracking with terror. He wanted to get up, to go to her, but his body wouldn’t budge, he was frozen in abject horror. 

“She’s not breathing.” Blair admitted squeezing the tip of the umbilical cord shut. It made the baby jerk suddenly, sending another shock wave through Bucky’s body. 

“She’s alive. She’s just not breathing.” Blair stated as she did it again. The baby jerked again and she brought the lifeless body back up to her chest. Images of the rag doll black cat on the couch flashed in Bucky’s mind as he sobbed in desperation. 

“You promised…” 

“I know I did. I know. I meant it.” 

The baby slowly started to twitch, to Bucky it looked like a death shudder, he’d seen enough of those in his life. He ran his hands through his hair, pulling at it as if that would somehow change things. This was it. This is what he gets for what he did to Blair, and for all the lives he took in Hydra’s name. This is what he gets for being the monster that this world had made him. The monster that not even Ivan Romanoff had wanted in the 70s when Anarchy 99 had managed to trap him in one of their labs. He’d been sent to kill their head physicist, but the man wasn’t there. Instead, Ivan and his Bastards where waiting for him there. A group of ruthless soldiers who bought him down far too easily. They knew he was coming. They had a man on the inside. Ivan had stood by his side, another cold hearted Russian telling him things he didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to believe. 

The memory flooded over him as he watched Blair trying to coax his lifeless daughter back into the world. Tears ran down his face unchecked, tears of grief, of pain, and of realization as the memory enveloped him like another contraction. Ivan spoke to him in English, softly at first. He called him Bucky, told him he had something to show him. The man turned the table Bucky was strapped to around revealing a room with a large glass window in front of him. He knew what two way glass looked like by now, from both sides. He realized that he was in an observation deck looking at a lab. There were three women standing in the lab, chatting. He figured the observation room was sound proof as they didn’t seem to realize they were being watched. The one was a short cherry blond woman who he didn’t recognize. Next to her stood a tall and beautiful golden blond woman who Bucky knew as a nurse in the army, her name was Adeline. Next to Adeline was a beautiful dark haired woman in blue jeans, a tight black shirt and a white lab coat. She was holding a big fluffy Siamese cat, rubbing it vigorously with a large sparkling smile on her face. The women laughed and Bucky heard his blood surging in his ears. It was Blair. She was right there, just a sheet of glass between them. He tried to call out to her to save him, to take him away from these people, but he was gagged and the room was soundproof. Ivan proved it by mockingly calling out to her on his behalf. The Russian millionaire then put one cold hand around his neck not tightly, but with a clear threat. “You are a fool my friend. She is a god among men and you discard her like dirt to go home and fuck your little star spangled boy toy. Such a pity for you. She could have saved you. But now you see, she’s mine. She loves it here. We give her everything her little black heart desires and she does whatever we ask her to. She makes us soldiers like you, she lets us live forever, she makes us rich with that big, beautiful, dark mind of hers and you spend what’s left of your life never knowing that this day even happened. That she was right there, and she didn’t save you.” He paused, walking up to glass and then leaning against it, looking back as Bucky. “I wonder if she would even lift a finger to help you if only she knew you were here. Do you think she would?” He asked, scratching the stubble on the jaw line. “I am not so sure my friend. A lot has changed since you died. Since your precious Captain America killed himself to escape a life without you. She is different now. She is free. Free from the confines of your world. A world that could not appreciate her for what she is.” Ivan pushed himself away from the glass again, but Bucky couldn’t break his gaze away from the woman that was close, yet so far. He had loved Steve fiercely for all his life and would never have been happy in a life that he wasn’t the centre of, but it would taste a lie to say he didn’t love Blair as well. She was his anker in many storms he had faced in the short time that she was a part of him. And he wanted her to open that door, to come up to him and release him from this hell that had become his life. He didn’t see Ivan turn on the sound system. Adeline’s smooth and inviting voice sounded over it first. 

“What do you think this man is up to now, Bee? He drags us all the way out here to stand by the glass and play with the cat like the girls you are!” Adeline mocks Ivan’s rough accent. 

Blair laughs, her joyous giggle filling Bucky with longing. “He’s plotting, as always Della, something about a Hydra project, probably that one we don’t need to know about.” 

Adeline groans dramatically. “You can’t tell me you’re not just a little bit curious…” She asks with a smirk, scratching the cat’s plush and puffy face as it buries its head deeper into Blair’s long black hair. She shakes her head. “Nah. It doesn’t matter who it is. I honestly don’t know what all the fuss is about. Everyone I gave half a damn about either came with me or is dead.” 

“Maybe you’re right.” Adeline said before the audio cut out. Bucky couldn’t help the tears that streaked his face. 

“You might think this is pointless. But I am sure that, someday, somehow you will remember this. And when that day comes, Sergeant Barnes, I want you to remember something. You see, you will always be the one who lied to her, who betrayed her. You are the one who didn’t appreciate what you had when she was yours.” The smug Russian circled around the table slowly, meticulously. “And I am the one who saved her, who gave her everything she wanted. I protected her, I respected her, and I was there when she needed someone the most. And that will always count for something. No matter if she ever finds out about this, it is a small lie compared to everything you and your American friends ever did to her.” He paused again, leaning closer to Bucky. “One day Hydra will grow tired of you as they do all their other failed experiments. And you will find yourself stranded in a world that forgot about you. Your programming will lead you back to the last thing that meant something to you. And that will be her, not your Captain who always kissed your ass whenever you wanted him to, but rather the heart you broke for him. And she will be the only one who can save you. Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. Either way, it won’t matter. She is not the girl who eats the apple when she had the whole Garden of Eden to enjoy in its absence. I am the one who gave her this garden. And when the dust around you settles, she will remember that. And you will remember me, here today. And when that happens, Sergeant, I want you to look her in the eyes, tell her you love her, and drown in the silence that follows…” 

The memory faded away as the baby in Blair’s arms started to fuss and whine quietly. She handed the baby to Bucky who took her eagerly and placed her against his chest. She seemed to squirm back to life then, wriggling in his arms as she finally began to cry. He cried with her as relief and sorrow flooded over him together. 

The next hour or so passed in a haze. He was the happiest he had been in years, but he felt cold and empty. He couldn’t get Ivan’s words out of his mind. They echoed eerily in his memory. He was lying on his side in her bed with the baby sleeping soundly under his watchful hand. Blair was dozing in and out of sleep in front of him on the other side of the sleeping infant. She opened her eyes, probably because he was staring at her. 

“You should go to Steve in Washington. He’s been looking for you. They can help you there.” She said sleepily. 

“He’s been looking for me?” Bucky asked hope and joy finally flaring up in this hollow chest. 

She nodded with a yawn. “Yeah. He’s gonna be out of his mind happy with this too. You know he always wanted a white picket fence. And in this world, no one is gonna give two shits if you live together and raise the kid that way. People don’t care about that stuff anymore.” She continued. 

He was quiet for a while, and once he realized she was asleep again he dozed off too. 

When he woke up the sun was streaming through the windows and he could see Blair walking up and down the room, smiling down at his daughter tucked in her arms. She was beaming down at the baby, singing a Russian folk song softly that made the baby wave her little arms around in delight. 

He smiled, tears in his eyes despite himself. For a moment he had a vision of her living with him and Steve, baking them into bankruptcy as she used to do back home in Brooklyn all those years ago. 

When she noticed he was awake she stopped singing and whispered to the baby. “Daddy’s awake. Look at those blue eyes, just like yours.” The baby gurgled and Blair giggled again, swaying the child side to side. 

“Blair.” He said her name as she looked up at him with a bright smile on her face, giving him her full attention. “Hmm?” 

“I love you.” 

The smile melted from her face and she went still, just looking at him with an utterly blank expression on her beautiful face. She walked towards him slowly, sitting down to pass him the baby. He took his daughter from her as he sat up. Another stark silence ringing in his ears, burning into what was left of soul. She cleared her throat as she got up, grabbing her phone. “Uhm, I’ll arrange for you and the baby to get to Washington tonight. It’ll be discreet and safe. I’ll call Steve and tell him you’re coming.” She said as she vanished into the hallway, phone against her ear. 

He lay there fighting back the onslaught of tears that threatened to break free from their prison behind his eyes. 

He put the baby in the centre of his bed and crept down the hallway. He heard her talking to someone on the phone, crying quietly. “I know that Nikolai. I couldn’t just leave him like that.” There was a pause as she sobbed again, trying to stifle it. “When are you coming home?” She asked. She gave a small laugh then, through her tears, and nodded. “Okay, he’ll be on a plane tonight going back to Washington. Tell your father to close the file then, and burn the damn thing. I never want to see it again, you bastard.” She chided playfully. Drying her eyes. “I love you too, more than I should. But don’t you ever lie to me like that again Ivan. I’ll kill you myself.” She said with an honest smile. 

Nick… Ivan Nikolai Romanoff. The oldest son of Sasha Romanoff, founder of Anarchy 99. An organisation dedicated to the self-actualization of all their members in what they believed to be a dystopian world. The states saw them as terrorist, the rest of the world hailed them as heroes. It only then occurred to him that the name on the stethoscope that has been around her neck earlier was Romanoff. And it explained why it has disappeared as soon as she came through the door. The rings on her ring finger betrayed her though. Bucky’s resolve wavered for only a moment before he collected himself again. “Can I talk to Steve?” He asked, startling her. She nodded, all trace of her earlier distress gone before his eyes. 

Steve met him on the airport and embraced him for all he was worth and the two of them sunk to their knees and sobbed unchecked into the night. Bucky was home, he was safe, his baby was healthy and he was back in Steve’s arms. This should have been the happiest day of his life. But the faint scent of burnt sage haunted him still. The possibilities of what could have been… Of the silence that shouldn’t be there… 

Steve was his heart and his soul, the love of his life. But Blair had been in anker in the storms, the calm beneath the waves. Now he was on a torrential ocean, floating aimlessly into the distance. He supposed, feeling Steve’s strong arms around him, that at least he wasn’t facing it alone anymore. 

As a red sun rose the next day he stood with the baby in his arms on the porch of a country house where Steve had bought him to keep him away from the press. The baby squirmed and he almost lost himself as a white bird flew above them. He decided he would call her Alma.

**Author's Note:**

> To those of you who didn’t pick up on my obscure and faint easter eggs, here’s a bit more information: Alma is the name of a river in Russia. The song that Blair was singing to her was Beyond the Quiet River which is a Russian folk song and easily the most beautiful song that was ever written, here is a link to it in case you hadn’t heard it yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8slArpj_XU it will break your heart.   
> If you can’t place why Anarchy 99 and the description of Ivan sounds familiar: It is from XXX and Ivan is just the character or Jorgy renamed. Yes he is an evil son of a bitch, and yes Blair is aware of that, but she isn’t exactly a good person herself. If I ever do write more about her (although I’m sure most of you aren’t interested in an OC), you will notice that she is involved in human experimentation and a lot of other shady things. Her plane was hijacked by Anarchy 99 after they heard that she was really the one behind the super soldier serum. Ivan offered her a lab of her own, a chain of hospitals, a research team, and more money than she knew what to do with if she works for them. She agreed. The only thing they ever asked her was not to dig into the Winter Soldier file when they got their hands on him. They were aware of who he was to her, and didn’t want that to compromise anything.


End file.
